


A Beautiful Thing (The Birth, Death, and Rebirth Remix)

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Female Character of Color, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Team, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-01
Updated: 2011-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:22:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing."<br/>~Mother Theresa~</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Thing (The Birth, Death, and Rebirth Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wojelah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wojelah/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Beautiful Thing](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3171) by Wojelah. 



The first time John sees her, she’s got what he comes to think of as her trader’s smile on. It’s like the smile his mom would put on for when they had guests - polite and friendly and welcoming, but not open. Not happy.

Maybe that’s why he steps up and tries to make friends; why he speaks of things that have no meaning to them except in the tone of his voice; why he holds his own smile as honestly as he can fix it on his face.

There hasn’t been much for him to smile at these last few years.

By the end of that first cup of tea, John thinks he’d like to see Teyla Emmagan smile for real.

\--

Sometime during the second year of the expedition, Rodney starts to realise that when Teyla smiles at something he’s said, she might not necessarily find it funny.

It’s something about the twist of her upper lip, he realises. More sardonic than she usually seems. More cynical than he thinks her. There’s amusement there, perhaps, but it’s not always at his comment. Sometimes, he thinks it be amusement at him. Or about something she’s not going to share but which relates to whatever he’s talking of at that moment.

Oh, she smiles when they’re telling jokes, or when they’re together as a team, but she doesn’t smile at Rodney - not really.

Later, Rodney considers that maybe that’s one of the reasons he starts to think about what he’s saying and how he’s saying it. To win from Teyla a smile that doesn’t have a twist.

\--

It takes Ronon a while to realise that something’s not right.

He first sees the change in Teyla’s smile just after her people go missing. She no longer smiles openly, the way she used to when among her team-mates. These are careful smiles, polite - the kind she gives to strangers. And after John reacts to her pregnancy like she’s personally betrayed him, Ronon thinks he understands why.

He wants to say something to John about that. It’s not his place to do so, so he doesn’t. Nothing he says would change John’s mind in any case.

But Ronon can be good to Teyla, feed her up, give her the consideration he was taught a pregnant woman needs.

He can make her smile with his care and concern, and if it’s a weary one, it’s also grateful and pleased and the first real smile he’s seen from her in too long.

\--

The first time John sees Teyla smile after her rescue is when they’re in the infirmary, and she’s holding her son.

He’s missed that smile - the ease of it, the pleasure in it. She’s been smiling her trader’s smile at him for so long, he’d almost forgotten what it was to see real joy in her expression. And part of that was his fault, for being so hard on her - for being so hard on himself. He never said anything to her, how was she to know? And the Athosian man doesn’t seem so bad.

John knows his own smile is slightly broken - ‘the smile of wrongness’, she called it once, laughing. Teyla doesn’t notice the wrongness now, though; she’s smiling down at her son with all the fatuous love of a doting new mother.

So he swallows hard and closes that door into summer.

And when Keller comes to take him in for surgery, John takes Teyla’s smile with him down into the darkness.


End file.
